GCOE faculty attends ERDT Research Management Training, Dr. Oreta: Speaker on Mentoring

 DOST and the Engineering Research & Development for Technology (ERDT) hosted a Research Management Training on March 12-13, 2016 at the Summit Ridge, Tagaytay. The objectives of the training seminar are: By the end of the training,

• "the participants should be familiar with engineering research management, graduate students mentoring, challenges to research and innovation, and collaboration in research; 
• be familiar with key strategies of other faculty advisers from other universities in managing students and research;
•  be able to learn and get insights from the experiences of other faculty members; and 
• be able to establish preliminary and potential linkage and collaborative works in research among co-participants."

Resource Speaker

 Dr. Andy Oreta, professor of the Civil Engineering Department was one of the resource speakers of the seminar. Dr. Oreta was invited to talk about "Research Management in Engineering (Mentoring)." In the seminar, Dr. Oreta presented his talk on "My Reflections on Mentoring" which consists of five subtopics: (a) My former thesis advisees, (b) Why students fail to finish the thesis, (c) My tasks as a thesis adviser, (d) Benefits of an ERDT adviser, and (e) A good mentor. Dr. Oreta listed his successful advisees like Dr. Jonathan Dungca (his 1st MSCE graduate), now GCOE Dean, Engr. Jason Ongpeng, now CE Dept. chair and Dr. Lessandro Garciano, now Head of Structural Engg Division - they are now the bosses of Dr. Oreta! Dr. Oreta used the PhD Comics to add humor to his presentation.  He also recommended a useful reference for mentors and graduate students, "How to get a PhD" by Phillips and Pugh. Dr. Oreta emphasized that mentoring is a lifetime endeavor which starts with academic advising to career & professional/family life counselling. He ended his talk with a quotation by St. Lasalle; "Artists work on canvas, builders work on stone, even doctors work on human bodies, but teachers work on human souls, which will shine with them like stars for all eternity."

One of the slides of Dr. Oreta on Mentoring as a lifetime career

Thirteen faculty members from DLSU-GCOE attended the training. Representing the CE Department were Dr. Mary Ann Adajar and Engr. Richard De Jesus who actively participated in the group activities of the training. There were six resource speakers, three from UP Diliman, two from Mapua Institute of Technology and Dr. Oreta from DLSU. The participants came from the ERDT consortium schools - UPD, UPLB, AdMU, CLSU, MSU, MSU-IIT, MIT & DLSU.

DLSU-GCOE Faculty busy with SWOT exercise